Genius Loci
Genius Loci Cortina d’Ampezzo project, first edition, has officially began on May 10, 2026. Born from a twenty-years friendship and a shared passion for contemporary art by Valentina Parolin and Clara Pacifico, NM Contemporary founder. Wished by the first and her husband Nicola Parolin and conceived and curated by the second. Genius Loci is an atypical residency project on an annual basis. It aims to involve the artists from the Parolin art collection but also from outside in a human, historical, anthropological, philosophical experience of the Cortina Valley in a context of family sharing at the Parolin house known as « Il Castelletto ». Artists are invited to spend as much time as they wish and to feel part of both the family and the local population and to create works focused on the soul of the place (the genius loci precisely).
Each artist will be free to express himself in the most congenial form, making himself an interpreter of the nature, history and traditions still deeply rooted in the territory. The works will be presented to the public every year on the second-last Sunday of August. Keeping a chronological order of acquisitions, the first edition begins with the first four artists encountered and acquired by the Parolins since the early 2000s (Matteo Basilé, Massimo Catalani, Giacomo Costa and Matteo Sanna), joined by three artists who have distinguished themselves in the last 12 months for their research strongly rooted in the values of the genius loci (Vincenzo Marsiglia, Antonio Barbieri, Roberto Maria Lino).
The following editions will reunite, according to the same criteria, a group of artists from the collection with artists the Parolin recently “met.” It is the latter aspect, the “encounter” and the “exchange”, that the Parolin twenty-year collection and the soul of this project revolve around. In a difficult historical moment where the concept of humanity is subjected to violent strains and empathy turns to apathy, the artists exhibited seek, each in their own language, the renewal of consciousness, emotions, and identity by immersing themselves in nature and engaging with the local population.
The cross-disciplinary approach of the artists hosted and then exhibited will reveal not only the variety of techniques and the eclecticism of contemporary research but also the equal beauty of the results achieved regardless of the nature of the works.